10/17/05 "Iran
Focus" -- -- Tehran, Iran, Oct. 17 – An
individual arrested in connection with Saturday’s twin bombings
in the south-western city of Ahwaz has confessed to have
received British training in Iraq to carry out the attacks, the
Iranian Majlis (Parliament) deputy for the oil-rich city
announced on Monday.

“The arrested individual is a deceived person who received the
necessary training in Iraq”, Nasser Soudani told the Fars news
agency, close to the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei.

“Foreign agents, led by treacherous and criminal Britain, have
trained teams in Iraq to create insecurity and an air of fright
and terror in the province of Khuzestan”, Soudani said,
referring to the ethnic Arab-dominated province whose capital is
Ahwaz.

Saturday’s twin bombings in a central Ahwaz shopping centre left
at least six people dead and over 100 injured.

Soudani said that two British intelligence agents arrested last
month in the southern Iraqi city of Basra had ties to both the
bombings on Saturday and a similar spate of bombings in the
volatile city earlier in June.

British officials have said that the pair were MI5 agents
working to uncover Iranian support for the insurgent attacks
against British troops in southern Iraq.

Iranian officials and state-run press have been advertising the
idea that Britain was behind Saturday’s bombings, a charge
denied by the British embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, hard-line
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the state-run ISNA
news agency that he suspected British involvement in the
attacks. “We are very suspicious about the role of British
forces in perpetrating such terrorist acts”, Ahmadinejad said.

“Our people are used to these kind of incidents, and our
intelligence agents found the footprints of Britain in the same
incidents before”, Ahmadinejad said, adding “We think the
presence of British forces in southern Iraq and near the Iranian
border is a factor behind insecurity for the Iraqi and Iranian
people”.

A demonstration has been planned to take place this morning
outside the British embassy in Tehran against London’s position
regarding the Islamic Republic’s suspected nuclear weapons
programme at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Some analysts see a link between the spate of recent attacks on
British forces in southern Iraq and the hardening anti-British
voices in Tehran.

“Iranian rulers are clearly fuming over what they perceive as
Tony Blair’s government coaxing the European Union towards a
tougher position on Iran’s nuclear program”, said Simon Bailey
of the London-based Gulf Intelligence Monitor. “They hope to
isolate the British position within the EU by linking it to
bombings in Ahwaz, but no one is buying this”.

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